> Regulatory action cannot solve the problem, because the Clean Water Act excludes agricultural sources, and the Safe Drinking Water Act does not cover private wells. Although some states do regulate nitrogen, voluntary action is the primary approach nationwide. [...]
> Kenneth Cassman, Ph.D., from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, said that progressive growers optimize 10 to 20 different crop and soil management practices, such as tillage, rotation, irrigation, pest management, and nutrients. “To come up with the impact of one factor out of everything else is almost impossible,” he said.
This is an opportunity:
> Cassman imagined a database to which every grower could anonymously report their yields and management practices. The potential payoff from such data, in terms of identifying what practices work best to improve both yields and efficiency of nitrogen use, would be comparable to that from thousands of field experiments every year, he explained.
An (open source agtech) database with crop yield, soil, and runoff optimization and open data and reports?
/? inurl:awesome site:github.com "FarmOS" : https://www.google.com/search?q=inurl%3Aawesome%20site%3Agit...
Irrigation parameters would be necessary to compare approaches.
You don't need software to fix runoff, though, ya know.
Already there are guidelines; some of which are hard rules to receive subsidies.
westurner•9mo ago
- "Discovery of nitrogen-fixing corn variety could reduce need for added fertilizer" (2018) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17721741